Rural Communities

Oregon Business Magazine’s April 2008 cover story, "PRISONTOWN MYTH: The promise of prosperity hasn’t come true for Oregon's rural communities" exposes the truth about the economic impact that the 1990s prison expansion has had on Oregon’s rural communities.

Deer Ridge Correctional Institution is scheduled to open in 2007 in the central Oregon town of Madras. Like many rural towns in Oregon and other states, Madras needs more jobs and a better local economy. In the 1990s, the Oregon Department of Corrections convinced city leaders that a prison would be the economic development project the community needed. Washington State University, Iowa State University, and The Sentencing Project have each published studies of prison towns showing that rural prisons don't provide the type of economic benefits the City of Madras is expecting. Rural towns with prisons have less job growth and economic development than similar towns without prisons. Why?

Prisoners of a Hard Life, the latest comic book from the Real Cost of Prisons Project is now available on the web. Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women & Their Children packs solid information and compelling stories into sixteen graphic pages.

For years, Justice Matters has followed Wyoming’s plans for a new prison. There has been an ongoing struggle among three communities in Wyoming to be the site of this new medium security prison. In February, the Wyoming legislature approved Torrington as the site for the $83 million facility in a 48 to 11 vote.

Wyoming Corrections Director Bob Lampert announced in December that the town of Torrington was selected as the site for a new 650-bed medium security prison. The prison is estimated to cost $83 million.